I watched the first four seasons of How I Met Your Mother four times in a single year. It's a show for which I have inexplicable patience in large doses. It's fun, often clever, and features a core cast of characters with whom I immediately connected. Still, that didn't stop me from being less than optimistic about the show's future while I watched the fifth season as it aired. Post-jilting, the series hadn't seemed to deal a lot with the central premise of the show beyond offering a lot of teases. The season meandered a lot but didn't really commit to anything for more than an episode at a time beyond a couple of ill-fated pairings for Robin. The result was a collection of mildly amusing episodes that manage to be significantly less bad when you're watching them en masse without expectations.
Season six, on the other hand, managed to lose me about halfway through (shortly after a certain funeral). It spent an awful lot of time focusing on Ted's flirtatious relationship with a new addition who we absolutely knew wasn't The Mother -- mostly because of things we already knew about The Mother but also because she was already married. I missed a couple of episodes, which prevented me from catching up on CBS' website, and just gave up. I hear that Zooey ditched her husband or some such and that she and Ted dated for awhile and it was all as pointless as it seemed.
Season seven started last week, though, and I'm now caught up with the first three episodes, and I have to say, I'm feeling hopeful. It could just be the effect of watching 3 episodes at once and my lingering affection for these people, but I think it's making important steps to clear the way for the Event We've Been Waiting For. There have already been needless teases, including the cliffhanger ending of the second episode, but the season so far seems to have set an admirable goal: helping Ted move beyond his past and remembering how to believe in romance again.
I'm not sure if this will make it a show I look forward to watching week-by-week the way I do Community or Parks and Recreation, but at the very least, I suddenly find myself looking forward to binging on this season in a year's time when I can speed through the teasing and just watch these people grow and learn and enjoy one another. Hell, I'll probably go and pick up season 6 just so I can see what shenanigans I missed in the middle of all the time wasting.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
I Heart Math
I'm trying to organize some thoughts about computing, creativity, creation, and theology. This is the only thing that's come out so far that makes sense. Hopefully I'll be able to provide further context for it in the future, but I really enjoy it, so I thought I'd share it early:
So long as anything exists in this universe, just one infinitesimal speck of cosmic dust, some lonely, quivering little quark, then one exists. If one exists, then so do zero and two and negative one. In fact, one carries with it into being all of mathematics: addition and multiplication and algebra, calculus and general linear matrices and an uncountably infinite number of points called z in the complex plain that probably don't lie within the Mandlebrot Set. Mathematics isn't something we invented. It isn't something we observe or model. It is the simplest, purest fact of reality. It is the direct consequence of the universe being something other than the empty set.
So long as anything exists in this universe, just one infinitesimal speck of cosmic dust, some lonely, quivering little quark, then one exists. If one exists, then so do zero and two and negative one. In fact, one carries with it into being all of mathematics: addition and multiplication and algebra, calculus and general linear matrices and an uncountably infinite number of points called z in the complex plain that probably don't lie within the Mandlebrot Set. Mathematics isn't something we invented. It isn't something we observe or model. It is the simplest, purest fact of reality. It is the direct consequence of the universe being something other than the empty set.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Introducing Fairly Green
I'm in a pretty horrible class right now on Software Project Management. We're working in groups on a case study, and our group's involves a first-time PM named Fairly Green. We were supposed to present our project charters today, and the professor suggested that we should treat it as if we were actually presenting to corporate officers at our fake company. This irritated me, as 90% of the class was doing the same case study, so presenting on our charter instead of discussing the decision making process that we followed in developing it seemed like a waste of time (it was). As such, I was planning on giving our group's presentation alone in character as Fairly Green. I spent more time than was probably good for my sanity developing a character for him, but when our group decided at the last minute to all present together, I wound up not being able to utilize any of it. So, here's a brief profile of Fairly Green. Maybe we'll get some short vignettes about his daily life before too long.
Fairly is a professional software engineer. 30 years old, he was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania by parents who provided for him adequately but were always busy with their own active social lives. He has a good sense of humor about his ridiculous name but less of one about his family. Case-in-point: when people ask about his name, he has an unfortunate tendency of responding that he, "asks [his] mother about it every Thanksgiving, but she's never been sober enough to give a coherent answer." He's never recognized how uncomfortable this makes virtually everybody.
Fairly graduated in the top 20% of his class from Notre Dame. Smart, but not brilliant, he worked incredibly hard for that ranking and only managed to form a handful of meaningful relationships over his time in college. Still, Fairly is diligent, detail-focused, and knows the name and birthday of everybody he's ever worked with. Shortly after graduating, he followed his girlfriend, Janet, to Maryland. She was raised in an Annapolis suburb and wanted to move back near her parents. He found work as a QA tester at Innovative Security Solutions, Inc. after a three month job search, during which he lived with and grew close to Janet's parents. He has since become a senior developer at the small company.
Fairly and Janet happily married a year after the move to Maryland and now have two children: three-year-old daughter Kayla and 8-month-old son Garret. They live roughly 45 minutes from Janet's family, who are an active part of the life of the young family and are all too happy to the ensure that Fairly and Janet get time to themselves at regular intervals. Having a young family is always trying, but ISS pays Fairly a competitive salary with generous benefits. As such, Janet, who was a biology major and began nursing school before quitting during the first pregnancy, has been able to act as a stay-at-home mom.
Fairly was always very close to his maternal grandparents, who lived in upstate New York. His grandmother died 3 months ago after a long battle with ovarian cancer that metastasized to her pancreas. This was itself painful, obviously, but it was made significantly worse when his grandfather started exhibiting signs of dementia in the final months, robbing both of them of having meaningful interaction in her final days. Fairly moved his grandfather to assisted living near himself and Janet shortly after.
As a reaction to these unfortunate events, Fairly briefly sought the chance to take on an enhanced role in raising his children. He suggested that he could move to reduced hours and work partly from home and encouraged Janet to pursue some of her tabled dreams and finish her RN certification. She refused, saying she at least wanted to wait until both kids were in school, and he gave up on it after a couple of weeks. Instead, Fairly threw himself into his work as a distraction. His supervisors took notice of his sudden dedication and assigned him PM duties on a new project, designing the control system and interface for a new, high end surveillance system. He and Janet were initially excited by the promotion, but both are beginning to regret it as it increases his hours, especially on weekends, keeping him from having much meaningful time with the children. They're making it work, but he's nearly ready to tell his superiors where his priorities rest.
Fairly is a professional software engineer. 30 years old, he was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania by parents who provided for him adequately but were always busy with their own active social lives. He has a good sense of humor about his ridiculous name but less of one about his family. Case-in-point: when people ask about his name, he has an unfortunate tendency of responding that he, "asks [his] mother about it every Thanksgiving, but she's never been sober enough to give a coherent answer." He's never recognized how uncomfortable this makes virtually everybody.
Fairly graduated in the top 20% of his class from Notre Dame. Smart, but not brilliant, he worked incredibly hard for that ranking and only managed to form a handful of meaningful relationships over his time in college. Still, Fairly is diligent, detail-focused, and knows the name and birthday of everybody he's ever worked with. Shortly after graduating, he followed his girlfriend, Janet, to Maryland. She was raised in an Annapolis suburb and wanted to move back near her parents. He found work as a QA tester at Innovative Security Solutions, Inc. after a three month job search, during which he lived with and grew close to Janet's parents. He has since become a senior developer at the small company.
Fairly and Janet happily married a year after the move to Maryland and now have two children: three-year-old daughter Kayla and 8-month-old son Garret. They live roughly 45 minutes from Janet's family, who are an active part of the life of the young family and are all too happy to the ensure that Fairly and Janet get time to themselves at regular intervals. Having a young family is always trying, but ISS pays Fairly a competitive salary with generous benefits. As such, Janet, who was a biology major and began nursing school before quitting during the first pregnancy, has been able to act as a stay-at-home mom.
Fairly was always very close to his maternal grandparents, who lived in upstate New York. His grandmother died 3 months ago after a long battle with ovarian cancer that metastasized to her pancreas. This was itself painful, obviously, but it was made significantly worse when his grandfather started exhibiting signs of dementia in the final months, robbing both of them of having meaningful interaction in her final days. Fairly moved his grandfather to assisted living near himself and Janet shortly after.
As a reaction to these unfortunate events, Fairly briefly sought the chance to take on an enhanced role in raising his children. He suggested that he could move to reduced hours and work partly from home and encouraged Janet to pursue some of her tabled dreams and finish her RN certification. She refused, saying she at least wanted to wait until both kids were in school, and he gave up on it after a couple of weeks. Instead, Fairly threw himself into his work as a distraction. His supervisors took notice of his sudden dedication and assigned him PM duties on a new project, designing the control system and interface for a new, high end surveillance system. He and Janet were initially excited by the promotion, but both are beginning to regret it as it increases his hours, especially on weekends, keeping him from having much meaningful time with the children. They're making it work, but he's nearly ready to tell his superiors where his priorities rest.
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